Ibiza Surprise Read Free Page A

was still sitting on the horse, no doubt neck-high with Vat 69. Out of respect for the dead, Derek did manage to keep the disgust out of his voice, but he said the funeral was to be quiet and quick down at Pinner after the Spanish police had done their stuff, and what the hell did brandy snaps have to do with it? In the end, I got thirty quid out of him for a draggy black outfit I’d spotted in Fenwick’s, and agreed to turn up. If I stuck at it all night, I worked out, I could do my baking and Flo’s bit as well.
     
    From then until the funeral was a bit of a dead loss, because Derek said parties were out and wouldn’t even consider a discotheque, so we had a number of sedate evenings with Purcell and Strindberg, interspersed with a lot of silences if I stopped talking, which you have to do sometimes. I gathered Derek was enjoying his job, had a nice company house with housekeeper laid on, and was concerned more than anything with how poor Daddy’s death would affect his professional image. He’s with Schuytstraat, the people who’d just mislaid their big new experimental aural sensator.
    But he wouldn’t talk about that. He asked me twice if I knew why Daddy had done it and what he had said in his letter; but of course Daddy never wrote letters, and I hadn’t heard from him for months.
    He also asked me, as the trustees had, what I was going to do; and I said carry on cooking. I don’t mind it; and I don’t see how on earth I’m going to find someone decent to marry unless I do. Derek didn’t get the point. I think he thought cooks stay in the kitchen, and his pride was offended. At least he did ask me, without enthusiasm, if I’d like to come and keep house for him, but I said no. My God, Holland.
    Mummy didn’t come to the funeral, and I think Derek was relieved: he was always a little afraid of her. The papers had dug out her theatrical history and added a bit about her being laid low with a virus in her beautiful Billy-Baldwin-designed Fifth Avenue home. I rather respected her for it. Whatever she was, she wasn’t a hypocrite. Anyway, the Fenwick outfit was pretty stunning, and I was photographed for two different newspapers, and there were four Daimlers and a Rolls-Royce, private ones, in the funeral procession. The owner of the Rolls-Royce had an alpaca overcoat and eyed me a good bit during the service. He was about Daddy’s age but much more the spring-grip dumb-bells and chinning-bar type: broadly built with dark hair and the kind of suntan you can’t get with a sunlamp, but can with a villa in Trinidad. Afterwards, he came across and took both my hands, and said: ‘Sarah!’
    He didn’t honestly look as if he needed a cook, but the suntan was more than something. I said:
    ‘Are you a friend of Daddy’s? It was so kind of you to come.’
    ‘My dear girl!’ he said. He was still holding my hands. ‘But surely you were at school with my Jane? At St Theresa’s?’
    I removed my hands. Some snotty schoolgirl called Jane. This was always happening. Daddy was only the Hon. Eric Cassells while I was at school, so no one connects me with Forsey. I ran my mind without enthusiasm over the ranks of St T’s. Then something made me look at him again.
    ‘Janey Lloyd!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’re not Janey Lloyd’s father? I can’t believe it! How is she?’
    He smiled and put his hands in his pockets. ‘She hasn’t changed a bit, and neither have you. You were the two most elegant girls in the school. But Sarah . . .’
    I had remembered at the same time.
    ‘But what are you doing here?’
    The power-beam faded, and his expression got back to the funeral.
    ‘You see, I had no idea, Sarah, that you were Lord Forsey’s daughter, or of course we’d have written. When I saw you standing there . . . you haven’t changed. You see, your father was staying with me,’ said Mr Lloyd sadly, ‘when he ended his life.’

 
     
TWO
    ‘They’ve got a hotel,’ I said, ‘in Seville and a flat at Jerez